The human eye can suffer a number of maladies causing mild deterioration to complete loss of vision. While contact lenses and eyeglasses can compensate for some ailments, ophthalmic surgery is required for others. Generally, ophthalmic surgery is classified into posterior segment procedures, such as vitreoretinal surgery, and anterior segment procedures, such as cataract surgery. More recently, combined anterior and posterior segment procedures have been developed.
The surgical instrumentation used for ophthalmic surgery can be specialized for anterior segment procedures or posterior segment procedures or support both. Such surgical instrumentation can comprise a Vitreoretinal and Cataract microsurgical console. Such a surgical console can provide a variety of functions depending on the surgical procedure and surgical instrumentation. For example, surgical consoles can expedite cataract surgeries (e.g. phacoemulsification procedures) by helping manage irrigation and aspiration flows into and out of a surgical site. And of course surgical consoles can provide other functions.
Vitreoretinal and Cataract microsurgical consoles can make use of a predefined memorized surgical procedure to facilitate a smooth surgical session. However, during surgery, an unexpected complication can arise (such as unexpected bleeding, partial retinal detachment, posterior capsule rupture, etc.). With existing surgical systems, it is difficult to modify a procedure “on the fly” to address such contingencies. Therefore there is a need for a system and method which allows a user to quickly and reliably modify a surgical procedure to handle unexpected complications.